The Ghost of Nottingham Road Hotel
For those who were wondering if the"i" in GHI stood for "European" with the small exception of New Zealand, it looks like the answer is going to be definitively, "No". This investigation took the Ghost Hunters International team to a new continent: Africa. The Nottingham Road Hotel looks like a nice establishment, and it certainly has a lot of history — going back to when the British held it as a territory and were engaged in conflict there. To aid in this investigation, they apparently booked the entire hotel. It's not a particularly large hotel and for all I know it may be there off-season and they just didn't have any other guests, but the absence of other people on-site is certainly a welcome change. Traditionally the Ghost Hunters team has had to work around the regular guests of hotels like the Stanley and the Queen Mary — there was even one time when they were investigating one ballroom while a party was going on in the ballroom right across the hall. Apparently the owner just wasn't that interested in a clean investigation, but such was not the case for our GHI heroes on this occasion. The primary reports of this hotel are of a woman supposedly known as Charlotte who has a backstory involving a solder who died in battle — I won't bore you with the details, suffice it to say that this woman has been reportedly seen fully corporeal, as a translucent apparition, and is thought to be responsible for at least one television, one lamp, and one sink faucent turning on and/or off. During one point of the investigation there were some very odd sounds which were quite plain — and turned out to be coming from a children's party next door. Oh well, neighbors, what can you do? Andy had an idea to test the faucet and he noticed when the hot water tap was turned on, then turned off (but loosely) the gasket would heat up and within a short time the faucet would be flowing freely again without human intervention — a seemingly paranormal event that was indeed not. He also checked the TV in question after seeing it go off by itself right in front of the entire team (on CCTV) when no one was even in the room. This wasn't a definitive debunk, but Andy surmised the timer button on the remote might be to blame. Hit it once by accident and the TV will turn itself off in a couple of hours, nothing paranormal about that (although it begs the question of who pressed that button prior to or during this particular investigation). In the kitchen Brandy & Barry both saw a light coming from a storage room with no other door, no windows and no lights. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that wasn't caught on camera so that leaves open the question of whether or not there actually was a light. Of course, even if we could determine that there was no light recorded at the precise time & place Barry and Brandy said they saw one we could make the argument that since they both saw it we can't rule out some other type of phenomena that affects people's senses in some real, but poorly understood way. Because of the light and the fact that they both agreed it felt like the room had cold drifting through it from no determinate origin, Barry wanted to play with a gadget that measures positive ions. I'm not exactly sure what this means, but I suspect it might be like detecting ozone. He also apparently checked a barometer (according to Robb), I saw there was some sort of digital weather gadget that was reading thunderstorms but I didn't see the standard barometer reading in inches or cm. I n any case, the positive ion reading apparently shot up dramatically in the room as Barry tried to get a spirit to interact, and the weather-thingy did seem to be saying there was a storm outside when there was none, so there is physical evidence something odd was going on in the kitchen. At the very least I think it's true that humans can react physiologically to ionized air and low pressure, possibly causing a feeling of anxiety or discomfort which one might attribute to a spirit. On the other hand, even if the feelings are caused by an understood phenomenon it's still not clear why such an atmosphere might suddenly coalesce in a room with no apparent cause. Other than what's been mentioned, the only other evidence caught during this investigation were three EVPs. In my opinion, they were actually pretty decent this time. One seemed to whisper, "yes" in response to a question while another seemed to say, "come back" as Barry was packing up his gear and leaving a room. The loudest, if not the most distinct, was a voice that the team thinks was saying, "Ask me" when Andy was challenging it to attack him. I'm not sure if it was a voice or what it might have said, but there is an unmistakable sound on the recording that doesn't sound like anything we're used to hearing. None of these voices (with the possible exception of the first one, in my opinion) sounded female, which surprised the client and the GHI team both. They suggested that the supposed spirit of Charlotte may indeed be around but perhaps decided not to interact with the team on this night — and there is a different spirit which did. A fairly reasoned guess, I agree, but here's what bothered me: Robb issued a "Haunted" verdict. Yes, a haunted verdict on only EVP evidence, which if I recall was something Jason & Grant had specifically singled out as a no-no. They may have broken this rule at some point, I don't recall off-hand, but I think it was a good rule and I'm drawing a line there. Declaring something haunted with a couple of audio clips is not cool with me. What's worse — and this may just be due to editing — it appeared they didn't even tell the client about their successful debunking. I hope they actually told them and Pilgrim just cut it out, but on the surface this echoed their last investigation to me: great investigation topped off by conclusions that seemed to come from a completely different team which had watched the actual investigation on a 9" television while dropping acid. I'm not sure what else to say. Thoughts?